Bears lose their ranking amid flurry of turnovers
Justin Wilcox and the Cal coaching staff spent Sunday breaking down the Bears’ 42-24 loss to Oregon, but Wilcox knew exactly what he was going to see before he flipped on the video.
“You can’t turn the ball over that many times against a team like that,” Wilcox said about 30 minutes after Cal’s Saturday night loss and about 30 minutes before the calendar flipped to Sunday. “… We had chances for shock plays, big plays. We didn’t connect on them. … Against a team like that, the margin for error is just so much smaller. That’s a talented team, and you’ve got to make those plays.”
Sporting its first AP top 25 ranking in three years and playing the last game of a Saturday packed with intriguing matchups, Cal had a chance to legitimize its 3-0 start and vault itself into the national spotlight.
Instead, the No. 24 Bears were gashed by No. 19 Oregon’s bigplay offense and committed five turnovers — one more than in the first three games combined.
After limiting North Carolina, BYU and Idaho State to long rushes of 21, 13 and 15 yards, respectively, Cal was beaten on running plays of 45 and 74 yards by Oregon. CJ Verdell raced 74 yards on the second half ’s first play from scrimmage to set up a 1-yard touchdown that put the Ducks ahead 35-10 and appeared to put the game out of reach.
Still, the Bears kept top NFL prospect Justin Herbert and the Oregon offense out of the end zone for the next 28½ minutes.
“Nobody quit. We don’t have quitters. We’ve just got to play cleaner. We’ve got to take advantage of opportunities,” Wilcox said. “… Our guys play hard, they compete, they play for each other and we can do some good things. We’ll use this experience to learn from, and they’ll bounce back. …
“It hurts. It feels like you got kicked in the gut. It sucks. There’s no other way to do it. Come back Monday and go to work.”
Cal was down 35-17 and was positioned to score from the Oregon 30 with 7:18 left in the third quarter, but Chase Garbers missed Jeremiah Hawkins and threw his second interception.
The Bears then trimmed it to 35-24 in the game’s final 3½ minutes, but Brandon McIlwain’s errant throw over the head of Vic Wharton III was intercepted by Ugochukwu Amadi for a 32-yard, gameclinching touchdown.
“Five turnovers is never acceptable,” said McIlwain, who lost a fumble and threw two interceptions. “… There were obviously a lot of mistakes that we need to work on, but there were good things, too. We can’t get down about anything. We need to use the good things as momentum and the bad things as learning opportunities.”
As Cal’s quarterback tandem struggled in combining to go 15-for-30 for 172 yards and four interceptions, Herbert coolly operated the Oregon offense. The 6-foot-6, 237-pound junior, who is considered by many the top NFL prospect in next year’s draft, completed 72.7 percent of his passes, didn’t throw an interception and wasn’t sacked.
“I think Justin Herbert throws the ball as well as any quarterback I’ve seen since I’ve been coaching,” said Wilcox, who has been coaching for 18 seasons, 11 of them as a defensive coordinator. “… He is an elite, elite talent.”
Cal will face an elite talent in nearly every game for the rest of the season, including Saturday when the Bears travel to Tucson to play Arizona and dual-threat quarterback Khalil Tate.
After playing UCLA and Oregon State in the middle of October, Cal plays Washington’s Jake Browning, Washington State’s Gardner Minshew III, USC’s JT Daniels and Stanford’s K.J. Costello in succession.
“I expect us to fight,” McIlwain said. “We’re a team that prides itself on being smart and tough. That’s being smart about fixing our mistakes and continuing to be tough by never stop fighting. These guys did not stop fighting until the last play of the game. The offensive line was pushing as hard as they could. The running backs were running through people. The receivers were making great plays for us.”